Johnny's Girl by Paige Toon

His kisses start at my ankles and trail all the way up my legs, over my back and up to my neck.
    ‘Mmm,’ I murmur sleepily, rolling over and coming face to face with him. His green eyes are piercing in the morning sunlight that spills through the floor-to-ceiling windows. He
kisses me slowly, deeply, and I feel that very familiar and
very
delicious spark of desire as he settles over me, his tanned, toned arms trapping me and keeping me exactly where he wants
me.
    Which is exactly where I want to be.
    ‘I love you,’ he says in a low voice, pulling away and staring at me seriously.
    ‘The feeling is very much mutual,’ I reply with a smile.
    And then he’s kissing me again.
    What a lovely, lovely way to wake up.
     
    Johnny is brushing his teeth when I come out of the shower. I dry myself off and he spanks my bum as I join him at the sink.
    ‘Oi!’ I laugh, wrapping my arms around him from behind and staring at his slightly fogged-up reflection. He rinses his mouth out and turns around to face me, wearing nothing more
than a pair of white boxer shorts and his tattoos, which decorate his arms and part of his torso. I glance down at the small one that he had done recently on his left pec, in swirly black writing:
Nutmeg.
    I run my fingertips across it with amusement.
    ‘I still can’t believe you did that.’
    Nutmeg is the nickname he gave me when we first met.
    He strokes his thumb down my jaw, tenderly. ‘You are a part of me,’ he says gently. ‘And now,’ he adds with a grin, spanking my bum again, ‘you will
always
be a part of me.’
    I giggle and slap his stomach, then I go and pull my blue, orange and pink block-coloured maxi dress out of my suitcase. Possibly for the first time in my life, I didn’t want to waste time
by unpacking.
    ‘Do you have to wear that?’ Johnny asks, wandering out of the bathroom.
    My face falls. ‘Don’t you like it?’
    ‘I prefer you naked,’ he replies with a twinkle in his eye.
    I tut good-naturedly and get dressed. ‘Well, I’m hungry. And sadly, you haven’t brought me to a nudist resort.’
    ‘Damn. That possibility didn’t even occur to me.’
    I grab a rolled-up T-shirt out from the suitcase and chuck it to him. He catches it and pulls it over his head, accepting my clothing choice without a second thought.
    God, I love being married to this man.
    ‘What are you smiling about?’ he asks me with a raised eyebrow.
    ‘I love being married to you,’ I tell him softly.
    ‘The feeling is very much mutual,’ he repeats my earlier phrase with a smile. ‘Now throw me my jeans, Wife.’
    One year and four months ago, I married the love of my life: rock star Johnny Jefferson. I fell for him when I worked for him as his personal assistant. He was a nightmare back then – a
proper bad boy: womaniser, drink and drug problems… Urgh, I still hate thinking about it. But allegedly he fell for me, too, even though he struggled to show it at times.
    Well, that’s a bit of an understatement.
    I thought I’d made the biggest mistake of my life when I fell pregnant. These days I can’t believe I ever regretted it, because we have Barney – our beautiful blond-haired,
green-eyed boy.
    And of course, now we also have an eight-month-old baby, Phoenix. But he arrived after marriage. Just. I’m pretty damn fertile, as it turns out.
    We have left our two gorgeous boys with my parents in a beach house in Malibu for one night – which is the longest Johnny could persuade me to get away. I know they’ll be safe and
sound – I miss them, but Johnny and I needed this break together.
    I’m back in America for the first time since leaving it two and a half years ago. Johnny has had to come back and forth for work recently, but he’s kept his trips short and sweet. He
always asks me to join him, but Phoenix has been so young. That’s the excuse I’ve used, but Johnny knows the real reason. The truth is, I’ve been in no hurry to return to this
country after the